Melanie
The Monday Morning Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Esther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
Esther
And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training, who empowers business owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves. And welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today we're talking about Stop Advertising to Save Money.
Melanie
We've heard that saying before.
Esther
It's a bit of an oxymoron, that one.
Melanie
Yeah, we've all heard this saying before. Rhyme, who said it?
Esther
Henry Ford, the guy who made Ford cars, the guy who said, You can have any colour you want as long as it's black, also came up with this doosy of Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping a clock to save time. Now, I don't know if you've ever tried to stop a clock, but time marches on. There's no way to stop time. But we can stop advertising at any moment. So what does he really mean?
Melanie
I think he's more advocating for continuing to advertise because it's impossible to stop time. And if you want to continue to grow your business, then stopping advertising is not the way to do it, although it could save you money.
Esther
It could save me money.
Melanie
In the short term. In the short term.
Esther
Exactly. In the short term. But if you want to be top of mind for when people start buying your product or service again, then you need to keep advertising, you need to keep marketing, you need to keep being in their space. Yes, there are ways to reduce advertising, so cut back on ad spend, make sure that you're doing it in the correct platforms, the correct places. But just cutting out all advertising marketing, just saying, oh, we can't afford to hire Melanie or Esther to run our social media advertising marketing campaigns. That's not a good strategy.
Melanie
No. And there's just, when it comes down to an urgent moment happening for a business like crisis management of some sort, if you haven't got the Comms team on hand to help you in the first place, then you've also got to worry about a diverse marketing and how you can turn it around as well. There's lots of reasons why it's worth keeping somebody on the marketing budget throughout sick and thin, even if If you're reducing your team, it might still be worth doing.
Esther
Yeah. It could be that you've had someone in-house, an in-house person doing your marketing, and you may need to start outsourcing or cutting back their hours or cutting back the amount of videos that you're making or getting produced high quality and things like that. There are ways of cutting back without cutting it out completely, because if you just all of a sudden stop marketing, people are going to think that you're not in business anymore. They're going to think, does that company still exist? If I contact them, would there be anybody there? I mean, this even goes as far as keeping your website up to date, keeping things like even the date on your website, the copyright from whatever date to the present year, those sorts of things up to date. So if If you're dropping off the face of the Earth, so to speak, and people don't actually know if you're around or if you're still in business, they're not going to contact you on the off chance that you still are. They're going to contact somebody that they are seeing on their feeds.
Melanie
Yeah. I think there is a bit of a misnomer when people feel that something has to go when things are hard. We've both experienced it personally where our customer said, look, I'm really sorry, I'm going to have to cut my losses right now. I cannot afford to continue marketing. It depends on what people define as marketing, doesn't it? Because, as you say, websites are marketing. They tend to be a little bit more static than social media. But what is marketing? How do you define marketing? Is it email marketing? Is it social media posts? Is it traditional marketing or digital marketing? I mean, in fairness, it should be a combination of all of that. So you can cut back on a lot of things without disappearing altogether.
Esther
Yeah. Don't forget word of mouth marketing as well, attending events, networking, all of those things. There are versions of everything now that is free in inverted commas. Because you can attend events either online or in person that have no charge. You pay your petrol, your diesel, and your car parking fee. You might even get a free breakfast thrown in. You can do webinars online free. Like I said, in inverted commas, it takes your time. Your time is what costs money. So if you have hired an in-house or an external marketing agency to help you over the years with all of your propaganda, all of your design, printing, web, social media, if you've hired somebody to do all of that and all of a sudden you're having to do it all yourself, as well as keep up to date with all your client work you already have and try to find new clients and make sales and stuff, I really think you're cutting off your nose despite your face.
Melanie
Yeah, very much a false economy. And understanding the KPIs for what's working for you with and without outsourcing people or even getting in somebody in-house, as you've said, it doesn't have to be all outsourcing It's confusing, does it? Maybe reducing hours. We appreciate that there are such things as financial crunch and financial crisis and paying the bills and making sure that your long-term staff and full-time staff are getting paid. We do completely get that. But you also have to balance that with, can you afford the time that it's going to take to replicate that work yourself? Because if you can't, if you feel that you're going to miss out on speaking to end users, converting email inquiries into phone calls into sales, which is what you do already. Can you afford to miss out that time? Because you won't be able to do it because you'll be creating graphics and social media posts and scheduling them and sorting up press releases and writing blogs for your website. It's a big commitment.
Esther
It is. Like you say, some people don't even realise the extent or the amount of stuff that they're marketers do for them. Like I said, it could be the design, it could be liaising with the print office, it could be updating the website. All of these things take time. And if you don't know how to do it previously, it also going to take you time to learn it. It's going to take you time to figure out when is the best time to post, what is the best platform to post on.
Melanie
Understanding all of this and also being able to report on what's working and what's not, because you expect your digital marketer, in or out house, to explain why this has worked or hasn't worked. They'll be printing reports and explaining them to you as well. Now, the onus is on you.
Esther
Yeah. And not to mention keeping up with trends. Keeping up with what worked yesterday on one platform may not work today or tomorrow on the same platform. It may be that you went from recording 30 second videos to now needing to record three minute videos because that's what the platform now requires. Or it could be that you go from using three hashtags to 30 hashtags. Please don't use 30 hashtags.
Melanie
Please don't use 30 hashtags. Please.
Esther
But these things change very quickly, and that's one of the things you're paying your marketing person or department or team for, so that you don't have to keep up on top of all these things that are happening with the beloved algorithm, with the platform itself. I mean, if your platforms all cease to exist tomorrow or if you have a blackout and you're unable to post or you're unable to do, what would you do then? What would you do if you were solely relying on one social media platform?
Melanie
Yeah, we've highlighted-.
Esther
You'd have to go in and research.
Melanie
We've highlighted this before, haven't we? We've had people who have got one or two social media platforms and they've been hacked. If you don't have a website for things to come from and you're only using social media. And some businesses are very successful on social media. I'm not going to diss them, but there's a huge risk that if you're only putting all your eggs in one basket, you're going to be very hungry one day.
Esther
Yeah, definitely. But I mean, we're not here to scare you. We're just here to say there are other ways and means to reduce down your spending. So So your marketing budget should be in place from January to last the whole of the year. That's also something that we've talked about in previous podcasts. You should have a marketing budget that you can use for attending events, for flying to an event in a different country, whatever you think will help your business. Not, sorry, not think. Whatever you have researched and investigated and know will help your business. But part of that marketing budget needs to be flexible in order to increase spend at a time when it may be the most difficult time to sell. Because if you are relying on this cost of living crisis, this recession, let's call it what it is, to pass before you re-advertise or re-market. You may not have a business when that happens.
Melanie
You weren't trying to scare people, Esther. Well done.
Esther
No. I mean, said it with a smile.
Melanie
We just wanted to bring to the floor today that there are many reasons why you should invest and remain invested in marketing. We know it tends to look like a catch-all that is going to save you a lot of money overall, but you're only thinking short term. It can really, really harm your brand, your brand awareness, your brand recognition. You will not stay top of mind. Marketing doesn't have to always be completely paid for. There is obviously an organic element to it as well. They do need to balance a little bit. We really hope that this has given you some food for thought, and we didn't try to scare you honest, did we?
Esther
No, it wasn't our intention.
Melanie
That's all we've got time for today, and we really hope that you found some useful topics here that were covered. We are always willing and able to listen to any of your suggestions for topics that you'd like us to cover. Don't forget, if you would like to appear on one of our podcasts, do let us know because you never know, you could be on the airwaves all over the world. Our largest audience is in the US, followed by the UK and then Ireland, and then a huge smattering of Europe. So if your audience is there, we need you on this podcast. So we look forward to hearing from you very soon. It's goodbye from me.
Esther
It's goodbye from me.
Melanie
Bye for now.
